This is the final part of a four-part series exploring ordinary sensory perceptions.
• 4. Seeing, Hearing, and Feeling
Attention exercises enable us to engage with our experiences more objectively. This helps us recognize when we are reacting automatically and allows us to practice responding intentionally instead.
“Human freedom,” Rollo May wrote in 1975, “involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness.”1
Though this seems like an intellectual challenge, it’s primarily an attentional one. For adults, interpreting the world often hinders direct sensory experience.
It’s easy to overthink mindfulness practice and forget to pay attention to the simple details unfolding around you. In any good practice group, the observations shared by participants are often more impactful than anything the teacher says to spark curiosity. Just being open and noticing everyday moments can really make a difference.
Five years ago, after a fall practice session at a retirement community, I noted some observations shared by the participants.2
“When I walk my dog every morning, I look for changes in the color of leaves. I find something new every time I look.”
“When we were practicing just now, I felt and heard the breeze, I felt the sun warming my back, and off to my left I heard a ginkgo leaf hit the ground.”
“I’ve been finding myself using mindfulness to ease into uncomfortable things that I would have avoided in the past. I almost didn’t dress up for the Halloween party this year, but I just broke it down into small steps and paid attention to the discomfort I felt.”
“I just got so relaxed, I thought I was going to slide off my chair.”
“I was looking at the drink someone spilled, and it made such a beautiful pattern. While we’ve been out here, it’s been drying and changing. It makes me think that maybe everything is constantly changing, even when we don’t notice. I was thinking about how when we go back inside, we aren’t the same as when we came outside.”
“I thought the mechanical sound behind me would keep me from noticing anything else, but then I noticed the relaxation in my legs and realized the sound had moved into the background and wasn’t a problem at all.”
“I wrestle with anxiety a lot of the time, but when we were practicing, I noticed the anxiety would come and go. When I paid close attention to a sound or the breeze, I realized I felt peaceful—like I didn’t feel the need to change anything for a while. The anxiety came back and went away again. It was so interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed this before.”
Many of these delicious examples were immediately followed by the observer asking whether they qualified as evidence of mindfulness. I run into this a lot. It reminds me of the disorientation we feel in response to poetry and art. Maybe the role of the mindfulness instructor is to redirect the destabilizing aspects of this paradoxically liberating practice.
This reminds me of my recent experiences in the pool. I started swimming laps four years ago, shortly after my grandson was born, and I have been surprised by how gradual my progress has been. It’s an excellent challenge for someone trying to encourage others to develop mindfulness skills.
What has enabled me to achieve things I once thought were impossible—such as playing the piano, running marathons, meditating daily, and now swimming—has been my ability to break these challenges down into manageable chunks.
I recently started following a program to improve my freestyle technique, which includes various drills targeting different aspects of the stroke, such as breathing, body position, and maintaining relaxation while exerting effort. Although it is still difficult, focusing on each drill has prepared me for the next one, and I am starting to develop a new muscle memory for what efficient swimming feels like in my body.
I learned to meditate by segmenting my practice into drills, which informs the way I structure the attention exercises I design and guide.
For example, the attention exercise below combines the previous three exercises I’ve posted here. You can do it without having completed the others, but the more you practice each of them, the more you’ll benefit from incorporating them all into one exercise.
I hope this approach helps you unpack this worthy challenge, trust the value of your cumulative efforts, and notice what it feels like to be alive with a bit more objectivity and a little less internal friction.
Exercise
This exercise explores sights, sounds, and bodily sensations to break the blindness of familiarity and bring awareness to the ever-changing present.
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
people watching
running errands
walking or running
before or after focusing on a screen
